Recently, the Department of Mathematics at our University issued a recommendation encouraging its members to publish their research in non-specialized, mainstream mathematical journals. For numerical analysts this will make an additional obstacle for their promotions. But even for discrete mathematicians this recommendation is causing concerns.

For several top mainstream journals I checked with tools offered by MathSciNet what percentage of discrete mathematical papers they published in recent years. Some statistics indicate that in some journals the number of papers with primary MSC classification, say 05 or 06 decreased significantly in the past 30 years. There are several possible explanations to this fact.

• The quality of research in DM is dropping.
• The majority of research in discrete mathematics is so specialized that it is of no interest for the rest of mathematics
• Some discrete mathematics journals attract even the best work of discrete mathematicians.
• Some top journals may be biased against discrete math.
• Maybe discrete math is no longer part of mainstream mathematics and will, like theoretical computer science, eventually develop into an independent body of research.

But the key issue is whether discrete math is nowadays perceived as mainstream mathematics.